A PANTHER HUNT. 
253 
the brute was in the throes of death. Reloading, I 
approached cautiously, and what was my disgust to see a 
huge hyaena lying on the ground, shot through the heart. 
Yet I could have sworn that its skin was spotted when I 
first caught sight of it. Not one of us is secure against 
the dominion of the imagination over the senses. 
The beat was taken up again, but nothing rose except 
a small jungle cat, which I stopped with a bullet through 
the head. After giving each of the kettle-wallas a little 
bamboo bakshees for his cowardice, we beat the other side 
of the fort, but found nothing. Where was the panther ? 
The general opinion appeared to be that our panther was a 
hyaena, but Taj 00b Khan, coming up, silenced that by 
showing the head of a goat which he had found in the 
temple, still fresh and bleeding. “A hyaena,” he said, 
“ would have eaten the head first.” Suddenly Banawat 
Beg whispered dekko , and raising our eyes to a tower just 
above us, we beheld a large round face looking at us over 
the parapet. I raised my gun, and it disappeared. What 
was to be done next ? It would be madness to attempt to 
clamber up into the tower, even if it were possible. 
Banawat Beg solved the difficulty. “ Throw up a cracker, ” 
he said. So a large Chinese cracker was lighted and slung 
